Thirty Girls Overview

"Thirty Girls" by Susan Minot is an intriguing historical fiction that focuses on the Lord's Resistance Army's real-life abduction of 139 girls from St. Mary's in Aboke, Uganda which took place in October 1996. The novel alternates between the viewpoints of two very different women: 15-year-old Esther Akello, one of the abducted girls who has escaped and is living in a rehabilitation center, and Jane Wood, an American journalist who travels to Africa to tell the tale of these children. "Thirty Girls" is a heart-rending recounting of the tragedy and drama that plagues war zones and how it affects those touched by its violence.